Winner of two Bancroft Prizes for best book in American history, Linda Gordon is the author of The Second Coming of the KKK and a biography of photographer Dorothea Lange. She lives in New York and Madison, Wisconsin.
"The Klan of the 1920s, less violent but far more wide¬spread, is a
different story, and offers some chilling comparisons to the
present day. . . A thoughtful explanation of the Klan’s appeal in
the fast-urbanizing America of the 1920s, which was leaving behind
an earlier nation based, in imagined memory, on self-sufficient
yeoman farmers, proud blue-collar workers, and virtuous small-town
businessmen, all of them going to the same white-steepled church on
Sunday."
*Adam Hoschschild - New York Review of Books*
"A must-read for anyone wondering over the last several months how
we ended up as a country—with the first African-American president
not even a year out of office—facing a group of golf shirt-wearing
young white men marching onto the campus of a prestigious
university carrying torches and chanting ‘Jews will not replace us”
. . . . Gordon documents not only the mechanics of how the Ku Klux
Klan roared back to power, both socially and politically, in the
1920s but why. The parallels between then and now, branding
differences aside, could not be more evident. To say it one more
time for those who wish it weren’t so, the past isn’t dead and it’s
not even past; and those who don’t learn from it are doomed to
repeat it. . . . Histories like Gordon’s should help Americans
understand the roots of these toxic ideologies, as well as the
circumstances that help them flourish, in order to better spot them
when they sprout."
*Erin Keane - Salon*
"The Second Coming of the KKK illustrates how the 1920s reboot of
the Ku Klux Klan was regarded as rather ordinary and respectable,
much like today's efforts to make everyday racism, sexism, and
anti-Semitism acceptable again. . . With the help of a couple of
savvy public relations pros, Klan membership spread like wildfire,
enveloping Northerners and Westerners in love with the idea of
defining themselves by what they were not."
*Deborah Douglas - Vice*
"Gordon is a thorough and perceptive historian . . . There’s more
to The Second Coming of the KKK than grim déja vu. There are
lessons too."
*Randy Dotinga - Christian Science Monitor*
"Sharply argued. . . . [Gordon] encourages readers to draw bold
lines between the political milieu of the Second Klan and our
current predicament."
*Todd Moye - Texas Observer*
"Set aside your preconceptions about the Klan, from the era of
Reconstruction. As the distinguished historian Linda Gordon
demonstrates in this chilling account, the KKK of the 1920s was
urban, northern, and modern. Its wizards and dragons used the
latest tools of mass advertising to spread their message of ‘true
Americanism’: racial purity, religious intolerance, and opposition
to immigration. Its members, one in six of whom were women, favored
women’s suffrage. Its campaign of terror ended not long after it
began, but it left on American politics its dark mark."
*Jill Lepore, author of The Secret History of Wonder Woman*
"The Second Coming of the KKK reminds us that we Americans bid good
riddance to serial aberrations in the civic and social life of our
republic repeatedly, only to learn that these phenomena are as
American as apple pie. Gordon’s timely, crisply written,
indispensable primer helps explain why another aberration is now
upon us."
*David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of W.E.B. Du
Bois: A Biography*
"A first-rate historian can show us the past in a way that
clarifies the present. That’s what Linda Gordon does here…[The
Second Coming of the KKK] reminds us that the sentiments that
powered the reprise of the Klan have never been entirely absent
from American life, and cannot be understood as an aberrant strain
that might be entirely eliminated from the national character."
*Nicholas Lemann, author of Redemption*
"An excellent historical treatment of an almost forgotten yet very
dangerous period of hate in America. What a history lesson for
today’s electorate."
*Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center*
"At once thoughtful, fair, and deeply troubling, The Second Coming
of the KKK exhibits the analytical wisdom of a master historian who
sharply reminds us that popular mass mobilizations can be
instruments of depredation."
*Ira Katznelson, author of the Bancroft Prize–winning Fear
Itself*
"As the author amply shows, [the Klan’s] fearful, angry spirit
lives on. A revealing, well-researched—and, unfortunately,
contemporarily relevant—investigation of the KKK's wide support in
the 1920s."
*Kirkus Reviews*
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